mzeiya
Elder Lister
Google celebrates Professor Okoth Okombo
by Mumbua Nzula NzyokaNovember 8, 2021
The doodle honours what would have been the Professor’s 71st birthday.
Google through its Doodle, today celebrates one of Kenya’s well-known figures, Professor Okoth Okombo. The doodle that appears on the Google search page celebrates what would have been the professor’s 71st birthday.
The doodle illustrated by Kenyan artist Joe Impressions celebrates the acclaimed professor and author, an eminent researcher of Nilotic linguistics who is widely considered the founder of African sign language studies. Throughout his life, Okombo worked passionately to improve the lives of deaf people and is recognised internationally as one of the leading scholars of sign language in the world.
Okombo founded the Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) Research Project in 1991. This project led to the widespread adoption of KSL across Kenya, allowing the nation’s deaf community to secure new opportunities in society.
For his achievements, the World Federation of the Deaf elected Okombo as its international president from 1992 to 1995.
Kenyan artist Joe Impressions was very excited to work on this doodle. Speaking about the final doodle Joe said, “After doing some research online, I thought I should depict the Professor doing what connected him to his students most, and that is giving lectures. I wanted to capture the action involved in a lecture and represent some common elements that are usually found in a lecture hall.”
To learn more about the Professor see here.
